Critic: The criticism of the popular film comedy Quirks for not being realistic is misguided. It is certainly true th...

Kyleon May 31, 2016

Poorly written question?

@LSATMax
Any help in understanding this one would be appreciated. From where I sit I see the following:
P1: "It is certainly true that the characters are too stylized to be real people."
P2: "That [being too stylized] could be problematic, but in this case the resulting film is funny"
P3: "And that [being funny] is the important thing for a comedy"
C: "The criticism of the popular film comedy Quirks for not being realistic is misguided"
Summarized:
F: Funny
SI: Satisfied What's Important
SC: Should Criticize
F & SI - > not SC
SC - > not F or not SI
I narrowed it down to between C and E.
(C) Film comedies should find their humor in their stylistic portrayals.
(D) Films are successful if they succeed within their genre
I chose (C) because it links a moral judgement about what a film should do with what the film in question did (Quirks "should" find humor from the stylized portrayals of its characters). And, if a film is doing what it should then it shouldn't be criticized.
I did eliminated (D) (the credited answer) because it introduces what I see as an unconnected issue of "success," which to work would require an additional assumption that "if successful, then shouldn't criticize." By itself (D) does not address the moral side of what should/shouldn't be criticized, but only a matter of fact - it will be a success. That just seemed too big of a jump for me based on previous LSATS...because to work you need the answer and an assumption.
That's a really long way of asking am I missing something or is this really just a bad question?

1 Reply

Mehranon June 5, 2016

@Kyle let's take a closer look at (C) and (D).

(C), Film comedies should find their humor in their stylistic portrayals.

This is far too broad. The critic is not prescribing that every film comedy should find their humor in their stylistic portrayals.

In Quirks, he believes the stylistic portrayals result in a film that is funny.

(D), Films are successful if they succeed within their genre.

We know "if" introduces a sufficient condition so we can diagram this as follows:

SWG ==> Snot S ==> not SWG

In this case, we know that Quirks is funny so it has succeeded within its genre of comedy. This would lead to the conclusion that Quirks is a successful film.

This would help justify the reasoning that criticism of Quirks for not being realistic is misguided.

Nevertheless, I would agree with you that this answer choice is not perfect, but it is correct and the other four are clearly incorrect.

Hope this helps! And best of luck tomorrow!

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